The Light Ages

Rating:
Summary: A remarkably industrial fantasy
Review: The Light Ages is a remarkable industrial fantasy by one of SF's finest writers. It's a complex and nuanced book distinguished by MacLeod's lovely and somewhat melancholic prose. It's nearly impossible to describe the richness of this novel, which is both a love story and the story of an attempted revolution in a brilliantly-realized alternate England. I've read few writers lately, either in genre or out, who can evoke a mood or a sense of place as powerfully as MacLeod does here. Enthusiastically recommended

Rating:
Summary: Intensely real people in an alternate history
Review: While there's fantasy in this alternative English history, the fantasy is more instructive than entertaining. The story remains dead serious and delves deeper into the motivations of society than sheer realism reveals.

We are told the life and times of Robert Borrows, an Englishman in a Victorian age which is influenced by a dark magic. It takes him from childhood as he first rebels against the society he's born into and then as an adult against the basic society. We're given the full story of his revolution and face essential questions which involve the issue of just what the revolutionary is truly revolting against and of the inevitable consequences of such revolt.

The story-telling is highly evocative and set against a darkly surrealistic backdrop. Idealism is portrayed along with the traps that go with this idealism. Obsession is looked at and dissected.

This novel isn't for Jordan and Tolkien fans, at least not for those unwilling to look deeply enough to see what is real at the bottom of the fantasy.

A key point to understanding this book is the protagonist's discovery that his lifetime adversary is merely human and that this discovery is somehow a disappointment. Then comes the question as to just who is the true adversary.

This is not a book for fast reading, but more of one to allow oneself to become absorbed in.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Intensely real people in an alternate history
Review: While there's fantasy in this alternative English history, the fantasy is more instructive than entertaining. The story remains dead serious and delves deeper into the motivations of society than sheer realism reveals.

We are told the life and times of Robert Borrows, an Englishman in a Victorian age which is influenced by a dark magic. It takes him from childhood as he first rebels against the society he's born into and then as an adult against the basic society. We're given the full story of his revolution and face essential questions which involve the issue of just what the revolutionary is truly revolting against and of the inevitable consequences of such revolt.

The story-telling is highly evocative and set against a darkly surrealistic backdrop. Idealism is portrayed along with the traps that go with this idealism. Obsession is looked at and dissected.

This novel isn't for Jordan and Tolkien fans, at least not for those unwilling to look deeply enough to see what is real at the bottom of the fantasy.

A key point to understanding this book is the protagonist's discovery that his lifetime adversary is merely human and that this discovery is somehow a disappointment. Then comes the question as to just who is the true adversary.

This is not a book for fast reading, but more of one to allow oneself to become absorbed in.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Ridiculously good -- atmospheric, a bit slow, very moving
Review: _The Light Ages_ has the feel of a steampunk novel -- that is, it is set in an England that resembles Victorian (or perhaps Edwardian) England, with magic that resembles rather grungy technology the motivating force in the background of the book.

The book is told by one Robert Borrows. Robert grows up in a Yorkshire mining town. The substance mined at this town is "aether", a magical source of energy that is the driving force of the economy and technology of the world of this book. Accidents with aether can cause people to mutate into "changelings" or "trolls", and Robert's life changes when his mother begins to mutate, and also when he meets an ambiguous girl, perhaps a changeling, named Annelise. Robert eventually escapes his home town and heads to London, where he becomes involved in fomenting a socialist revolution. He becomes a "mart", someone outside the Guild structure of England. The Guilds apparently control all the technology, and all the labour. Robert, thus, makes his living via the black market, or by simply stealing, and he also becomes a writer for a revolutionary newspaper. His focus is the injustices of the Guild structure, but all along we are also showed the maltreatment of the changelings.

In London Robert also again encounters Annalise, now calling herself Anna Winters. She has become attached to the upper classes, particularly via her friendship with Sarah Passington, daughter of perhaps the most powerful man of the realm. Robert's doomed attraction to the strangely glamourous Anna motivates him to continue to visit her when he can. He is both disgusted by the class inequalities revealed to him, and also of course attracted by the perquisites of the very wealthy -- not to mention such beauties as Sarah and Anna.

The book turns, finally, on revelations about the emptiness behind the aether-based power structure of the rulers of England, and an ambiguously successful "revolution". Robert and Anna learn much about their past -- and they are intimately involved with the opening of a new "Age". But the new Age is perhaps not all they might have hoped.

I had a complex reaction to this novel. It is for much of its length quite frustrating. The pace is glacial. But it remains absorbing for the excellent writing, and for the fascinating details of life in this alternate England. What really redeems the book is the ending, which I found emotionally wracking, and honest, somewhat surprising, almost but not quite cynical. I was moved to tears -- I think honest tears -- and the final scene is perfect.